Government officials criticized Google and China's Baidu search engines, along with 17 others, calling for them to aggressively filter all sexual content. Companies that do not comply with the threat risk heavy fines or being booted out of China.

Pornography is illegal in China, but the content proliferates into the country as more Chinese citizens begin to get Internet access. A woman last month was arrested after she reportedly posted an explicit video of herself on the internet.

A collection of seven agencies, including the Ministry of Public Security, have banded together in an effort "to purify the Internet's cultural environment and protect the healthy development of minors." The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center noticed that more web sites, including Google.cn, collects large amounts of links to pornographic web sites.

Baidu, Google -- the No. 2 search engine in China, trailing only Baidu -- NetEase, Sohu, and Sina were also named on the list created by the government. Google doesn't attempt to censor pornographic search results or images in China, and uses an automatic filter and a red-flag system.

Search engines are expected to censor objectionable content, and then the government uses a massive Internet filtering system to eliminate material that slips through the cracks. The Chinese government is well known for restricting and censoring internet content to its 253 million Internet users throughout the country.

China's efforts to "control and censor the internet, and the government had tightened restrictions on freedom of speech and the domestic press" has increased, a U.S. State Department report published last year.

Intelligence analysts wondered if this small crackdown on porn content will lead to a bigger internet crackdown in the future.

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China is only doing this as it doesnt generate revenue within China itself, as a majority of porn sites reside in the US and abroad.

If they (the Chinese Government) were really serious, they would be focusing on all of the Karoke bars (brothels) and massage parlors (also brothels) that exploit poor under-age girls and encourages the spread of HIV/Aids amongst the younger generation of Chinese. When I was in China, such establishments were rife and pretty much on every street corner, not to mention the prostitutes waiting in every drinks bar waiting to earn their keep.

Looking at this in a different angle, getting rid of porn, while probably better off for the chinese economy, will have a far greater negative socio-economic effect on the people.

According to your logic, I think getting rid of porn will escalate the prostitution/teen exploitation problems they already have. However, if you want to think of it as a way of boosting the economy by pumping money into the system, thats logical, but totally fucked.

1,328,230,000 (19.68% of world population) people in China (2007 est.) By doing this is it gona reduce population or increase it? Getting rid of it will cause (in theory) men to have more sex with their wife.

A lot of those guys are trying to find wives from other countries like Japan, Korea, Thailand, Russia, etc.

The reason why the male to female ratio is skewed the way it is, is partially due to the one-child policy. The other factor is in Asian societies the eldest son takes care of his parents when the parents get old and weak. Essentially Asian Social Security. The daughter who gets married off is by tradition required to support her husband's parents.

Because of this, many Chinese couples are trying to find out if they're getting a boy or a girl. Many of which abort their baby if they find out it's going to be a girl. Sad but true.

I read somewhere once that under normal circumstances, female babies have a lower mortality rate than male ones... so you'd think that the ratio would be balanced out or skewed towards a greater female population. In either case, there's a lot of desperate Chinese guys out there.

You're right that female infant mortality seems to naturally be lower than male infant mortality. However, at least in the U.S., more males are born than females. But then, females have longer average lifespans. So in the end, females average around 51% of the population.

China isn't doing this for any population control. It has always been and will always be about control.

Pornography leads to solcialization and free thinking (not directly related, just a by-product). Same reason religious organizations for centuries have suppressed pornography and free thinking. Without that, they lose the ability to control thier people. China without the stranglehold control over thier people as they have now, would instantly break up along province lines, much as the USSR did.

Why is this so? Because of the cultures which inhibit sexual behavior. If we were more open about sexuality instead of making it taboo, it wouldn't have the negative effects.

Problem is, if the general population spent their time pursuing something that is free, instead of requiring production of goods, services, revenue for influential industries, the money trail dries up quite a bit.